‘Foto-síntesi’ is the title of this exhibition hosted by the Botanical Garden of Valencia for the second time. It shows the works of the students of the Painting and Photography course of the degree in Fine Arts (UPV), taught by José Luis Cueto and Pilar Beltrán. This collaboration gives the students the opportunity to get out of the classroom and their comfort zones to create an exhibition in which they have to bind their creations together with a series of specific premises: the Garden and the botany. 

The starting point of this exhibition is a group visit of the 20 artist who participate in the Garden. With all kinds of cameras, analogue, digital and even mobile phones and polaroids, the students took photos who have been the base of the final artworks. For two weeks, they worked intensely, manipulating them with different devices such as scanners, enlargers, photocopiers and printers, as well as different techniques like painting, collage, blueprints or borax, among others. 

During the process, the students who took part in Foto-síntesi have learnt to adapt their usual work interests and methodologies to a quick ellaboration proposal that, in many cases, has provided them with new tools and formal solutions. The group dynamics has been essential in this workshop, since they did not only solve and adapt the procedural part to the exhibition space, but also thought about the links and discrepancies between painting and photography when interpreting the world. They also reflected on the need to set up visual agreements to depict the environment and stall time in pictures. An obsession shared by photography and painting experts in order to create these images that will enhable observation and description of the living portrait in full extension. Quite a challenge.

COMMISSION: Pilar Beltrán and Carlos Peris.

Hort de Tramoieries hall. Free entry.